The Voice of the People

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"I ain't sayin' he don't," returned Marthy Burr with a severe glance in the direction of her eldest daughter, who was minding Jubal in the kitchen doorway. "Thar's red heads an' red heads, an' his ain't no redder than the reddest. But he came honestly by it, which is more than some folks can say as is got yellow. His father had it befo' him, an' thar's one good thing about it, you've got to be born with it or you ain't goin' to come by it no other way. I never seed a dyer that could set hair that thar colour 'cep'n the Lord Himself—an' I ain't one to deny that the Lord has got good taste in His own line."

Then, as Nicholas took up his hat, she added: "If they ask after me, Nick, be sure an' say I'm jes' po'ly."

Nicholas nodded and went out, followed to the road by Sairy Jane and Jubal, while his stepmother called after him to walk in the grass and try to keep his feet clean.

When he reached Kingsborough and crossed the green to the Burwell's house, which was in the lane called "Back Street," he fell to a creeping pace, held back by the fluttering of his pulses. Not until he saw Juliet standing at the little whitewashed gate did he brace himself to the full courage of approaching. When he spoke her name she opened the gate and gave him her hand, while all sense of diffidence fell from him.

"I've been looking at you for a long ways," he said boldly, "an' you were just like one of them tall lilies bordering the walk."

She blushed, turning her clear eyes upon him, and he felt a great desire to kiss the folds of her skirt or the rose above her left temple. He had never seen any one so good or so kind or so beautiful, and he vowed passionately in his rustic little heart that he would always love her best—best of all—that he would fight for her if he might, or work for her if she needed it. There was none like her—not his stepmother—not Sairy Jane—not even Eugenia. She was different—something of finer clay, made to be waited upon and worshipped like the picture of the goddess standing on the moon that he had seen in the judge's study.

Juliet smiled upon his ardour, and, leading him to a bench beneath a flowering myrtle, made him sit down beside her, while she spoke pious things about Adam and the catechism and the salvation of the world—to all of which he listened with wide-opened eyes and a fluttering heart. He wondered why no one had ever before told him such beautiful things about God and the manifold importance of keeping a clean heart and loving your neighbour as yourself. It seemed to him that he had been living in sin for the twelve years of his life and he feared that he should find it impossible to purge his mind of evil passions and to love the coloured boy Boss who had stolen his best fishing line. He asked Juliet if she thought he would be able to withstand the assaults of Satan as the minister told him to do; but she laughed and said that there was no Satan who went about like a roaring lion—only cruelty and anger and ill-will, and that he must be kind to his brothers and sisters, and to animals, and not rob birds' nests, which was very wrong. Then she added as an afterthought, with a saintly look in her eyes, that he must love God. He promised that he should try to do so, though he wished in his heart that she had told him to love herself instead. As he sat in the soft light, watching her beautiful face rising against a background of lilies, his young brain thrilled with the joy of life. It was such a glorious thing to live in a great, kind world, with a big, beneficent God above the blue, and to love all mankind—not harbouring an angry thought or an ill feeling! He looked into the kind eyes beside him and felt that he should like to be a saint or a minister—not a lawyer, which might be wicked after all. Then he remembered the waxen-faced, choleric clergyman of the church his stepmother attended, but he put the memory away. No, he would not be like that; he would not preach fire and brimstone from a white-pine pulpit. He would be large and just and merciful like God; and Juliet Burwell would come to hear him preach, looking up at him with her blue, blue glance. In the meantime he would not rob that marsh hen's nest which he had found. He would never steal another egg. He wished that he didn't have that drawerful at home. He would give them to Sairy Jane if she wanted them—all except the snake's egg, which he might keep, because serpents were an accursed race. Yes, Sairy Jane might have them all, and he wouldn't pull her hair again when he caught her looking at them on the sly.

Presently Juliet called Sally and took him into the quaint old dining-room and gave him cakes and jam on a table that shone like glass. There he saw Mr. Burwell—a pink-cheeked, little gentleman who wore an expansive air of innocence and a white piqué waistcoat—and Mrs. Burwell, a pretty, gray-haired woman, who ruled her husband with the velvet-pawed despotism which was the heritage of the women of her race and day. She had never bought a bonnet without openly consulting his judgment; he had never taken a step in life without unconsciously following hers.

"Really, my dear Sally," he had said when he heard of Nicholas's reception by his daughter, "Juliet must a—a—be taught to recognise the existence of class. Really, I cannot have her bringing all these people into my house. You must put a stop to it at once, my dear."

Mrs. Burwell had smiled placidly as she patted her gray fringe.